The royal family is bracing itself for its saddest family secrets to be pored over in public after details of Prince Harry’s threatened memoir were revealed.
The 416-page book – the first of a three-title deal for which he will be paid £36.8million – is out on January 10 and will be called Spare – an apparent nod to the phrase ‘heir and a spare’ about his place in line to the throne behind older brother William.
Publisher Penguin Random House yesterday boasted of its ‘raw, unflinching honesty’. The firm even plugged the pricey £28 hardback by promising that it ‘takes readers immediately back’ to the day the boys, then 15 and 12, walked behind their mother’s coffin at her funeral in 1997.
‘As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling, and how their lives would play out from that point,’ it said.
Royal author Richard Fitzwilliams said: ‘The Palace will be very concerned, especially in the early months of King Charles’s reign. It is a sensational title and implies the writer was not valued or certainly that he did not feel at the centre of events.’